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binoculars on one of the lifeless forms. Little Maya, no more than seven years old, lay on her back, staring up at the gray late-winter sky. Crimson horror flowed out of the ragged mess where her belly had been. Memories arose unbidden of him blowing tiny tummy farts for her while she squealed and laughed and complained how much his bristles were scratching her. Grandma Ana was next to the child, facedown and unmoving in the frost, a knife clutched in her hand. One of the men kicked the old woman’s corpse as he nursed what looked like an injured arm.
    Sofia, shaky and fearful, reached him from behind.
    “What is going on, Papa?”
    “Stay where you are, Sofia,” he said harshly. His throat had clamped tight and did not want to work.
    Screams drifted up from the hacienda: a woman’s howl, his own woman. Mariela Pieraro. She screamed in her native tongue, lashing at her tormentors, who all appeared to be gringos, although most of them were so filthy that it was hard to be certain.
    Road agents
, he thought, the very words like a rattlesnake in his mind. A collection of vaquero pretenders, costumed in a motley collection of army camouflage, urban gangbanger, and cowboy fetish outfits. They ran like vermin all over the outer wastes of the Texas Republic, but Miguel had never known them to venture so far into the Federal Mandate. That was why he had brought his family to settle here, so they would be safe. His head swam and squirmed with horrified rage as he realized how wrong he had been about that. He had led them all here, and now they were dying for it. His hands were shaking so badly, he could hardly make out the scene below. A hard mercy in a sense, because at that moment three men were attacking his wife.
    Just a few seconds’ exposure to the atrocity was more than enough for Miguel. He could no more stand to watch the unfolding horror than he could have perpetrated it himself. He let the binoculars fall and tried to push himself up from his prone position hidden in the lush greensward on top of the ridge overlooking his family home. His stomach heaved as he did so, and he dry retched, stumbling badly as he turned to hurry down the hill to his daughter.
    Perhaps his only surviving child now.
    Teetering and almost falling down the slope on legs as stiff and unyielding as a tin soldier’s, the cowboy almost knocked over his oldest girl, so blinded was he by the shock.
    “Father? Papa?”
    He took the reins from Sofia with violently trembling hands and somehow pulled himself up into the saddle. Maybe someone had managed to get away, or perhaps some of the gunshots were from the survivors, trying to fight the agents off. He could ride down there, perhaps help out. Maybe give the survivors a chance to fight back, even the odds.
    Maybe, just maybe …
    “What is it? Father, Papa, tell me,” she pleaded in a small voice cracking with panic. She, too, could hear the gunfire and screams coming over the ridgeline.
    Miguel unholstered his Winchester, feeling its deadly promise in his shaking hands. It was too late, far far too late to save his loved ones, but high time indeed for a reckoning with those who had taken their lives.
    Maybe
...
    He checked the load and slid the rifle back into the saddle holster. With a tap of his heels, his mare began to crest the hill. Sofia mounted her animal and followed suit. “I’m coming with you,” she cried out to him in strangled English
    Miguel shook his head fiercely. “No, you are too headstrong for your own good. Stay here. I will—”
    The boom of a large-bore weapon rolled over the crest like a single note of distant thunder. He turned quickly in the saddle, pulling the binoculars up to his eyes so quickly that he smacked himself in the face. His wife’s body was slumping to the floor of the wide veranda that ran around the hacienda, leaving a dark smear on the whitewashed wall. One of the rapists spit at her, as she lay on the ground.
    A small sound escaped from Miguel’s